No possessor inversion in German PPs

Abstract

There are several options to express possessive relations in German, one of them is the construction using a possessor introduced by the preposition von (‘of’). In non-standard German, these possessive PPs may occur before or after the possessee. However, this is not the case with possessees in dative case or after prepositions. In this case, the possessee obligatorily precedes its possessive PPs. In this paper, we will show that a feature-driven movement approach can derive the restrictions imposed on this construction by assuming a [•P•] on D. This feature can be checked either by merging a higher P or by moving a lower PP. The general constraint Merge-over-Move prefers the former whenever possible. Thus, the construction becomes sensitive to PPs as well as dative DPs, which both block movement to SpecDP.